Oh, my goodness. The twelve year old inside me cannot stop giggling at calling something bites. (It’s a French thing, you’ll have to google it.) But! Saw this idea while scouring the Pinterest for low carb breakfast ideas other than eggs.

I’ll give this a good grade – it’s yummy. Ground turkey mixed with some grated butternut squash and onion for moisture and flavor, with some fresh rosemary, sage and red pepper flakes to add spice. I am actually looking forward to mornings this week for the first time in a while.

Spicy Turkey Breakfast Bites
(Can we call it sausage? I don’t know if we can….but that’s the idea.)

Preheat your oven to 400″. Line a baking sheet with silver foil and spritz with baking spray.
In a medium bowl, mix together everything but the turkey, then add in the turkey and mix well. I use clean hands, but use a paddle attachment in your mixer if you need to. Make twelve meatballs out of the mix, about the size of a golf ball. This is really sticky, btw, so just be mentally prepared. Then, wet your hand or the bottom of a glass and smoosh the balls down so they’re about 1/2″ thick and look like slider patties. Bake 20 minutes, turn, bake 10-15 more minutes. If they didn’t get brown enough, broil for 2-3 minutes. (Don’t bake much longer because you don’t want dry little hockey pucks.)

And, are you asking yourself why there’s a tablespoon of flour in there? It’s a back-up sponge; the ground turkey, grated onion and squash have a LOT of water between them. A little dash of starch (like bread crumbs in your meatloaf) keeps the moisture in the meat instead of running out the sides. I think. Since, you know, this is theoretical as I am not a food scientist.

Cool, and serve for brekkie. We had ours with an oven frittata, although a three-pack of these would be a great breakfast on their own.

The next time I make these, I am adding chopped spinach. Just for the added color and nutrients.

We’ve been getting a little nuts on the sugar thing (snort. we. you guys totally know who is to blame for this.), so we’re hopping on the no sugar bandwagon for a little bit to get that back in line. That means a fast and already prepared hearty breakfast (mainly so I don’t get a green chile bacon burrito in the Blake’s drive-thru every single day), and we love our little oven omelettes over here.
My obsession with Hatch green chile continues, so they’re the flavor in this iteration. Instead of the little silicone baking cups, I went with a square pan to slice in to servings. Honestly, those little cups are a pain in the ass to clean – and I can’t put them in the dishwasher because it’s like the soap never really comes off them or something. Ok, I digress. Breakfast, bitches!! And a serving comes in at 141 calories and 11 grams of protein. That is what my blood sugar calls a WIN.

Preheat your oven to 325*, and grease an 8” square cake pan. Spread out the diced ham in the bottom of the pan.
In a medium skillet over medium heat, add half the olive oil and mushrooms with a little S&P and saute the mushrooms until they are slightly golden and have shrunk by about a quarter. Spread them over the ham in the pan. Next spread the green chili over the ham and shrooms.
Put the other half of the olive oil in the skillet and add the onion, season with S&P. Saute until they are mostly translucent and maybe a little brown on the edged. Toss the chopped fresh spinach on top, season w/ S&P, put on the lid and remove from the heat. This will wilt the spinach.
While that’s doing it’s thang, crack the ten eggs in to a medium bowl and whisk them with a little salt and pepper. Stir the spinach and onion to combine, and spread over the mixture in the square pan. Gently pour the eggs over everything, and smoosh down any floaty bits that pop up. Dash the top with a little cheese. Bake about 35-40-ish minutes until golden and puffy. It should not jiggle when you shake it, and a tester will come out clean. Cool. Slice. Serve at room temp or put into individual servings to eat during the week. My plan is to serve this with those little turkey sausage patties. If that works, we’ll have that recipe in a couple weeks!

If you like real tabbouleh, I think you will love this. The parsley is the star. This was just going to be Saturday lunch and a way to use up a half bag of the TJ’s grilled veg, so of course I have no knolled ingredients or process photos to include. But, this was yummy enough to warrant a share – so forgive me.
This is hearty, and fresh, and makes for a filling lunch. You could add some tuna to boost it up, if you wanted. Or just serve it as a side to some rotissimat chicken you picked up on the way home.
If you are lucky enough to be able to eat cheese, some chunks of feta in this would push it into the orgiastically good zone.

Directions:
Ok, while the water is boiling for your pasta, make the dressing. In a large bowl, whisk together everything but the oil, then drizzle and whisk it in last until you have a nice emulsion. Pour half of the dressing into a medium-sized microwave safe bowl. This dressing is really intense, do not panic. Once is mixed with everything it will mellow out.
Peel the chickpeas, put them in the bowl with the dressing and toss to coat. Microwave for one minute, stir and set aside.
While the pasta is cooking, chop your vegetable and layer them on top of the dressing in the bowl (but do not mix!) and put that in the fridge to wait for the last step.
When the pasta is al dente, drain it and then immediately put the hot pasta in the bowl with the chick peas and give it a stir.
Once the pea/pasta mixture has cooled to room temperature, toss it with the rest of the ingredients and it is ready to eat. Or, stick it back in the fridge. Because you coated the beans and pasta with that super-strong dressing while they were hot, you don’t have to wait until tomorrow to enjoy this. It is ready right now.

It all started with a jar of jam. A beautiful, urn-like, Costco-sized jug really, filled with sparkling fig jam. Fig is my favorite, next to apricot, and the best brand is Tuna’s (which Caravan stopped carrying!) I was so sad until that moment in Costco. That is, until I got home.
Because, you see, this gorgeous golden Greek jug of hope held a horrible, horrible secret that only revealed itself when you took your first bite. Vanilla. They put FUCKING VANILLA in the jam. It tasted like my father’s pipe tobacco smelled. So, great. Now I had a Costco-sized jug of inedible fig jam taking up precious refrigerator space. And it stayed there for several months while I decided what to do. Then it occurred to me: crostata di mamellata!! Of course. Found a nice nonna recipe on The YouTube. It used oil and eggs in the crust – intriguing! I tried it and took it in to the office. It was lovely, and consumed with glee.

But overall the feedback was that it was too sweet – I’d made the layer of jam too thick. Everyone loved the vanilla now that it was in a tarte. I thought the crust needed a pinch of salt, and would taste better with butter than oil. General consensus was that it tasted like a giant fig newton. I’m cool with that. And realized essentially this is like those stained glass cookies you make for the winter holidays.

Fast forward to Saturday morning, time to try those adaptations. This time the dough mixed in the food processor, and I used melted butter instead of the oil. I thought this was a good idea. Oh, lawdee lawdee lawd. Do not ever do this. Ever. For reals. Learn from my pain. What an awful, greasy glob it made. I hoped by putting it back in the fridge for an hour, it would become useable. It was. Whew, dodged that bullet.
For the sweetness, the second batch which (THANK GAWD) finally ends that damn jar of fig jam, I stirred in the juice of one lemon. That did the trick, and balanced out the sweetness nicely. If I could do dairy, a dollop of mascarpone or plain Greek yogurt would be absolute heaven on this puppy.

The next time I make this, I will use either apricot or bosenberry jam. And I shall feast, betches!

Let’s make this – and I hope you check out the nonna video – I love the Italian technique, whether it is pasta for noodles or for pastry you beat that egg then slowly add in the flour. With your damn hand, dammit. Because centuries of practice going back to the Roman Empire cannot be wrong.

Set aside 2Tbsp. of the egg. Preheat your oven to 350*. In the bowl of your food processor, put the dry ingredients and briefly pulse to combine them. Add the butter, pulse til it looks like fine crumbs. Add the liquid, and pulse again to combine.
You will wind up with a crumbly mass. Turn it out on your floured board and gently knead a few times. Cut off 1/3 and set it aside. Roll out the larger piece to fit the bottom and sides of your pan(s). Fit it in the pan and trim the edges. Roll out the remaining dough to the same thickness (about 1/4″) in a big rectangle-ish shape and using a swirly-edged pasta cutter, slice it in to ½” wide strips. place these in the lattice style of your choice on top of the jam, and pinch them in to the dough at the edge. You’ll have many strips left. When that is done, smoosh down the dough at the sides of the pan with your finger, it should be about ¼” higher than the jam. Take the remaining strips and place them around the circumference. Gently brush all the dough with the reserved beaten egg, and sprinkle with the sparkle (or normal, or turbinado) sugar.
Bake 350* for 40m. Cool completely before slicing. Then have with your afternoon caffe with the neighbors.

This is the second attempt at these babies. I’ve been trying to capture Himself’s favorite dessert, pecan pie. Although these are not quite there, they are quite tasty. Hopefully a future post is coming that can be called the pecan pie version. Not today, though. If I make one more batch of these this weekend, I am afraid Himself will have my head.

This version is just sweet enough, with a nice crunch from the nuts, and a little hint of salt in the special icing.
These are a little more fussy than my usual, but don’t be scared off. It’s not hard, there’s just a couple extra bits. But hey! That’s what makes these so special. And pretty enough to get rid of the leftovers to the neighbors!
Shall we?

Mix the wet in to the dry genty until it is shaggy-looking. Turn on to your board/counter, and gently flold and knead until the tough barely holds tegether. With your board knife, cut the dough in to four equal parts, and gently shape and flatten each in to a disc about 6” across and ½” high. On two of the discs, sprinkle:
¼ c. dark brown sugar
¼ toasted chopped pecans.
With your board knife, gently lift one of the plain discs and set it on top of the nuts/sugared disc. (Do the same for the other) Gently press down, they will kind of stick together. Smooth the outside edge so there’s no brown sugar poking out. (Otherwise, the top half will just slide off the bottom half during baking.) Use your board knife to slice each disc in to 8 wedges. (I do halves, quarters, then eighths). Place about ½” apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Toss the pecan halves in the foamy egg whites. Brush the backs and tops of the wedges with the beaten egg white, and place a pecan half on each. (Why not the sides? I don’t know the chemistry of it, but essentially it’ll seal the sides so there’s no where for the scone to rise and expand in the oven.) Sprinkle the moist tops with a little more brown sugar. Bake about 15 – 18 minutes until deep golden. Remove from the oven. and place the scones on a cooling rack. When they are just barely still warm, drizzle with the salted brown sugar icing. (And ermehgerd, this icing! I wanted to just eat it with a spoon. This would be amazeballs on a coffee cake. Soooo yummy.)
The Icing:
In a microwave-safe bowl (or 4 cup pyrex!), put:
2 Tbsp. dark brown sugar
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbps. water
Microwave until it is bubbling. (Mine took about 30 seconds). Stir in:
¼ tsp. salt
½ tsp. vanilla
1 c. powdered sugar.
Stir. It should be the consistency of a thick icing. Put it in a pastry tube to drizzle over the almost-cool scones. Serve and eat!

My new favorite coleslaw is easy, fast, zesty and bright. And easy. Wait, I said that. Oh! And no mayo! This is zippy the day you make it, the next day it will have more juice from the cabbage and it will be hotter because the jalapeno has been infusing everything.
We love this with grilled chicken, or pork. As a side with tacos, and actually ON fish tacos. It is super yummy.
You ready? Let’s do this!

SUMMER! The rains are finally here. It took a long time this year, so long we began to wonder if they would ever get here. But now it is officially summer. Hot, sticky days beg for cold, crunchy salads.
You know how much I love me some carrot salad. It’s a summer staple in our house. I made this one for my mom’s birthday lunch, and loved it so much I’ve made it again and again.
This is an easy-peasy salad, almost like that carrot raisin salad from childhood, but with a grown-up (and mayonnaise-free!) twist.

Use a food processor to grate the carrots. Or use children – free labor, quick healers, and all that.

In a medium-sized salad bowl, whisk together the lemon, agave, oil. Dump in the rest, stir and serve. Or, you can stick it in the fridge and eat it later. It is good both ways: crisper with less sauce the first day, crunchy and juicier the next.
This is fantasic for picnics and barbecues (no mayo!), or with a sammie at lunch.
Going with four servings, the calorie calculator at verywell.com says each serving has:
Calories 163
Fat 7.3g
Carbs 23.9g
Fiber 5g
Sugars 14.8g
Protein 3.1g
and…..632% of your Vitamin A for the day!

These are so tender, savory, spicy and sweet, with just a little tooth from the corn kernals. I highly recommend making these immediately for dinner or breakfast. We spread ours with butter and a little drizzle of agave syrup. Total yum. Himself considers them very tasty.
I made these a couple weeks back after I saw a Food52 Instagram post for these masa cakes with cheese and cilantro crema. They looked so very tasty; well, except for the cheese and crema parts in our lactose-impaired household. Modified a bit for our tastes, boy are these amazing. The recipe is brilliant with the addition of some corn starch to the flour – it makes these so very tender.

As always, this recipe needs Hatch green chili. Do not use the mushy tasteless canned things. If you don’t have Hatch, mince up fine a fat jalapeno without the ribs and seeds, but use about 30% less of that than the green chili. And, if you are lucky enough to be able to eat cheese, a sprinkle of cotija on this would be amazeballs.
I keep wanting to see how these would be as a bun for an eggie sammich on a weekday morning, but there are never any left by Monday morning….life’s tough, I know.

Mix the dry with the wet until combined. You don’t have to be super gentle like with wheat flour, the masa doesn’t have gluten to toughen things up. (Don’t go nuts – there is a little AP in there.) Cook the way you do pancakes. Then happily consume them.

Quick share of a fun cake. We were invited to game night at a friend’s house, so of course I volunteered to make dessert. Because me.

I started to go Super-Karen and think of triple chocolate with a salted caramel, or orange-chocolate with Cointreau….and then told myself to calm the fuck down. Just a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting would be fine.

So, that is basically what we got. Three layers of Ina’s chocolate cake sandwiching my grandmother’s fluffy vanilla frosting and a little ganache to top it off. Since it was a naked cake, I brushed it with a Kahlua simple syrup. I wish I hadn’t garnished it with the swirled chocolate bits on top (it was a pain to slice that way) and the ganache was lovely by itself. But, ya know – live and learn.

This puppy got rave reviews (Ina’s cake always does), so I put the steps & the recipe links in a Google doc. Give it whirl. It is incredibly moist and chocolately, without being so treacly sweet it makes your teeth hurt. We all need a little choco indulgence now and again, and this baby fit the bill nicely. If you make it, I’d love to hear how it turns out, and how you adapted the recipe for your perfect indulgence.